The Benefits of Using Educational Video in The Classroom

Teachers Using subtitled video as a teaching aid in the classroom gain many benefits including greater student interest and improved reading and literacy skills.

There is substantial research promoting the use of video in the classroom as a dynamic resource for supporting curricula. According to a recent teacher survey, 94% of classroom teachers have effectively used video during the course of the last academic year. And most teachers were using it frequently - on average, once per week. But why?.

As educators, our aim is to get students energized and engaged in the hands-on learning process, and video is clearly an instructional medium that is compelling and generates a much greater amount of interest and enjoyment than the more traditional printed material. Using sight and sound, video is the perfect medium for students who are auditory or visual learners. With the added use of subtitles each child then has the choice to watch, listen to, or read each presentation. Video stimulates and engages students creating interest and maintaining that interest for longer periods of time, and it provides an innovative and effective means for educators to address and deliver the required curriculum content.

Video Creates an Experience…

Consider teaching with the voices from the past by introducing students to great historians, political figures and famous people who lived centuries ago. Envision the classroom in which children hear the cry of a nearly extinct species and see the colors and hear the sounds of animals that thrive only in a remote wilderness half way around the world. And what about investigating the laws of motion, sound and energy transfer by viewing the launch of the space shuttle on its voyage into space? Think about how much easier it would be to understand the diverse cultures of people who live in other areas of the world if you could encounter them in their own environments - hearing their songs, observing their rituals or listening to their silence.

The benefits of using video in education includes providing a sensory experience that allows concepts and ideas to actually become an experience and come to life as students are guided through each adventure.

Video As a Flexible Teaching Medium…

The more interested and engaged students are, and the more interactive each learning session is, the more students will enjoy, learn from and retain information from the lesson.

Video provides a means of interactive instruction and is a very flexible medium. Having the ability to stop, start and rewind is absolutely invaluable. It provides the option to stop each video and challenge students to predict the outcome of a demonstration, and elaborate on, or debate a point of historical reference. You also have the option to rewind a section of the video to review a segment to ensure that children understand a key concept. You can ensure to add further interactivity by copying activities, conducting discussions or repeating demonstrations and experiments in the your classroom.

Effectively Using Video in The Classroom...

Research has demonstrated that the most effective way to use video is as an enhancement to a lesson, or unit of study. Video should be used as a facet of instruction along with other resource material available to you for teaching a particular topic. Teachers should prepare for the use of a video in the classroom in the same way they do with other teaching aids or resources. Specific learning objectives should be determined in advanced, instructional sequences should be developed and reinforcement activities planned.

However using the most appropriate online educational video service provider is extremely important so each teacher has the confidence in advance of the quality of the content and instruction provided. Using the right online educational video service should help teachers or parents to minimize lesson preparation time by enabling them to easily identify and select the right video for the lesson, and draw upon the other resources provided by that service to enhance the learning outcomes, and the quality and benefits of each lesson.

The Value of Essential Video Support Tools…

If students and teachers are to receive the maximum benefits from the use of video in education, the video should be supported by a selection of other tools and resources that enable each topic to be fully investigated and explored. The use of online video should be supported by the use of an interactive word glossary, dictionary, thesaurus and an online encyclopaedia.

Access to lesson plans specially written to be used in conjunction with the video help not only to minimize lesson preparation time, but also help provide valuable additional learning activities and projects that further enhance the use of the video as an educational aid.

Choosing the Right Educational Video Provider…

There are a lot of websites now offering the use of what is claimed to be educational video. But video produced specifically for the teaching of the K-12 curriculum is in much shorter supply. There may be many videos available that initially appear to be excellent from a visual perspective, but often they have been produced originally for Television, or for use at conferences, but certainly not for teaching the requirements of State or National curriculum’s, or with the needs of the classroom in mind. At the same time, many of the free educational video-sharing websites do not make it easy to select the right video without the teacher or parent spend countless hours sieving through video of only a general educational nature.

And then of course there is the most important issue of subtitles, or what is otherwise referred to as closed captions. Professionally subtitled video enables each child to effectively study the material in the video, and improve their Reading and Literacy skills simultaneously. At the same time, by including the option for the student to read the presentation, as well as either watching or listening to it ensures that video will cater for the greatest range of preferred learning styles. However at the current time the issue, and value of subtitling has been largely ignored because of the significant additional cost of providing it, and only one online video service makes this subtitling widely available on video that has been developed specifically for teaching curriculum topics.

Zane Education, with their comprehensive online video library of over 1,000 videos teaching 260 curriculum-aligned topics, is currently the online video service provider that has included subtitling with enlarged font sizes into their educational video catalogue.

With their average video being 12 minutes in length, and several videos on each topic often providing a total instruction time of over 60 minutes, their online video service also includes a significant online quiz testing facility for each topic, and a range of very beneficial study support services including free lesson plans for each topic, and additional interactive video study tools that enable the teacher and student alike to thoroughly explore each topic.

Zane welcomes and encourages feedback and additional ideas from teachers, schools, parents and students about the effective use of video in the classroom, and in education generally, in order to assist them in their commitment to a path of constant improvement.